When she approached the women’s section she was turned away by an Orthodox woman patrolling the site who said she is not a woman.

By JTA
01/07/2015

A transgender woman was denied access to both the women’s and men’s sections of the Western Wall.

Kay Long, who designs wedding dresses, evening gowns and costumes, on Monday visited the Western Wall with a friend visiting from Madrid.

When she approached the women’s section she was turned away by an Orthodox woman patrolling the site who said she is not a woman. She was not allowed into the men’s section because she does not look like a man and in any case would not wear a yarmulke.

“From an early age we are taught that if we place a note at the Kotel our prayers might be answered,” she wrote Monday using the heading “Dilemma” on her Facebook page, under a photo of her outside the Western Wall plaza with the Kotel in the background. “All that’s left now is to take a picture and say a prayer from afar with the hope that it will be answered. Because God is everywhere and loves us all.”

After hundreds of comments and likes, Long on Tuesday morning posted a clarification, saying that she had no intention of praying at the Western Wall during her visit, and believes that it is more important for the Orthodox worshippers to be there than for her to make a scene.

“Inside, I believe that God is everywhere,” she wrote, adding that she believes in a live and let live motto.

“The point is, I decided to respect humans wherever they choose to be, and they didn’t respect me,” she wrote.

“Your prayers will be answered because you are a pure person and more wise than all of those who prevent you from coming close to the Kotel,” one of her Facebook friends responded, who also decried “gross discrimination,” against transgender people in Israel.

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“The rate of immunisation falls as you go north to south. It tracks the socio-economic statistics in the county,” said Matt Zahn, medical director of Epidemiology and Assessment for the Orange County Health Care Agency.

At Capistrano Unified school district, for instance, there was a 9.5% rate of children not fully vaccinated because of parents’ beliefs. At the nearby, poorer Santa Ana Unified district, in contrast, only 0.2% of kindergartners had exemptions on file.

A measles outbreak at Disneyland, stemming from an unvaccinated young woman dubbed patient zero, has shone a light on such dichotomies. Officials have confirmed at least 32 cases, almost all of them unvaccinated.

It is a strange first-world irony that wealthier, better-educated parents are the ones reducing infant vaccination rates, said Zahn. “Many people in this country have never seen a case of measles,” he said. “We’re a victim of our own success.”

The outbreak has triggered recrimination towards an eclectic group of activists who are accused of sabotaging immunisation campaigns by peddling medical myths.

“If we get to a few thousand cases in this country we’ll start seeing deaths. That’s unconscionable,” said Paul Offit, chief of infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.